translated whole lines of it in the wonderful speech of Gargantua to the
vanquished. His contemporaries, who approved of his borrowing from
antiquity, could not detect this one, because the book was not printed till
much later. But Rabelais lived in Maine. In Anjou, which often figures
among the localities he names, he must have met with and read the
Chronicles of the Counts in manuscript, probably in some monastery library,
whether at Fontenay-le-Comte or elsewhere it matters little. There is not
only a likeness in the ideas and tone, but in the words too, which cannot
be a mere matter of chance. He must have known the Chronicles of the
Counts of Anjou, and they inspired one of his finest pages. One sees,
therefore, how varied were the sources whence he drew, and how many of them
must probably always escape us.

When, as has been done for Moliere, a critical bibliography of the works
relating to Rabelais is drawn up--which, by the bye, will entail a very
great amount of labour--the easiest part will certainly be the bibliography
of the old editions. That is the section that has been most satisfactorily
and most completely worked out. M. Brunet said the last word on the
subject in his Researches in 1852, and in the important article in the
fifth edition of his Manuel du Libraire (iv., 1863, pp. 1037-1071).

The facts about the fifth book cannot be summed up briefly. It was printed
as a whole at first, without the name of the place, in 1564, and next year
at Lyons by Jean Martin. It has given, and even still gives rise to two
contradictory opinions. Is it Rabelais' or not?

First of all, if he had left it complete, would sixteen years have gone by
before it was printed? Then, does it bear evident marks of his
workmanship? Is the hand of the master visible throughout? Antoine Du
Verdier in the 1605 edition of his Prosopographie writes: '(Rabelais')